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Proprietary software is software that grants its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner a legal monopoly by modern copyright and intellectual property law to exclude the recipient from freely sharing the software or modifying it, and—in some cases, as is the case with some patent-encumbered and EULA-bound software ...
This is a list of proprietary source-available software, which has available source code, but is not classified as free software or open-source software. In some cases, this type of software is originally sold and released without the source code , and the source code becomes available later.
Diagram of software under various licenses according to the FSF and their The Free Software Definition: on the left side "free software", on the right side "proprietary software". On both sides, and therefore mostly orthogonal, "free download" . A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software.
1] Commercial software, or seldom payware, is a computer software that is produced for sale [2] or that serves commercial purposes. Commercial software can be proprietary software or free and open-source software. [3] [4] [5]
Software licensing agreements usually prohibit resale, enabling the company to maximize revenue. [20] Proprietary software is usually offered under a restrictive license that bans copying and reuse and often limits the purchaser to using the software on one computer. [21] [22] Source code is rarely available.
A software philosophy that combines aspects of FOSS and proprietary software is open core software, or commercial open source software. Despite having received criticism from some proponents of FOSS, [7] it has exhibited marginal success. Examples of open core software include MySQL and VirtualBox.
Any software is source-available in the broad sense as long as its source code is distributed along with it, even if the user has no legal rights to use, share, modify or even compile it. It is possible for a software to be both source-available software and proprietary software (e.g. id Software's Doom).
Open-source software can also be commercialized from selling services, such as training, technical support, or consulting, rather than the software itself. [5] [6]Another possibility is offering open-source software in source code form only, while providing executable binaries to paying customers only, offering the commercial service of compiling and packaging of the software.